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Do you remember a time when people around you broke out in laughter, but you didn't hear the joke?
Be careful not to leave out information for some people in your audience. For example, if you say "you can read it on the slide", you are probably excluding people who cannot see the slide.

This page helps you make your presentations, talks, meetings, and training accessible to all of your potential audience, including people with disabilities and others. Inclusive presentations have many benefits.

Be open to diversity in your audience and any accessibility issues. Basically, be aware that some of your audience might not be able to:

see well or at all,

hear well or at all,

move well or at all,

speak well or at all, or

understand information presented in some ways well or at all.

Therefore, organizers and speakers should do things like ensure the facility is accessible, speak clearly into the microphone, describe pertinent visuals, and other considerations listed on this page.

Respect participant's needs and be open for other accessibility issues. While most issues are addressed here, people might have specific accessibility needs that aren't covered here and you didn't think of. For example: Someone might need to take breaks at set times for insulin injections. Someone with Tourette syndrome might randomly shout out during a session. Someone with a physical disability who cannot take notes might need to record the session.

Often speakers won't know if participants have disabilities, for example, a presentation at a large conference where organizers didn't ask registrants. In some cases you might know the accessibility needs of participants ahead of time, such as for an internal training. Even then something could change, for example, a new participant could join the training at the last minute or someone could develop accessibility needs before the training.

To be prepared for any situation, make your event and your presentations fully accessible.

Presentations that are accessible to people with disabilities are inclusive to many more audiences as well, including people who are not fluent in the language and people with different learning styles.

Accessible presentations also have additional benefits, such as in these situations:

Consider a live presentation with visuals that is recorded and made available online as an audio podcast. If during the presentation you described the visuals (for people who are blind or otherwise cannot see them well), then those listening to the podcast will also get the visual information.

CART provides real-time text of the speaker and other audio. CART is used by people who are deaf or hard of hearing, people who can understand text better than spoken language — including people whose native language is different, and others. CART output can also be used to develop a transcript.

Ask speakers and participants if they have accessibility requirements.

For example, include a question on registration forms for conferences, send an email to company-internal training participants, etc. Invite participants to include specific requests; for example, someone who is hard of hearing might request seating small discussion groups in a circle to make it easier to hear people talking, or someone with low vision might ask to sit in the front row to see the screen better.

For example, ensure the building entrance, meeting room, bathrooms, etc. are accessible, as well as the presentation stage. (There are checklists online to help ensure a facility is accessible, such as Accessible venues - checklist and Accessibility Checklist for Existing Facilities .) Provide accessibility information, such as the accessible routes between meeting rooms. Let speakers and participants check out the rooms in advance to suggest optimum positioning of the speaker, screen, seating, etc.

(Assistive listening devices (ALDs), hearing loops, or induction loops; and Computer Aided Real–Time Captioning or Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) are explained in the Terminology section.) Work with participants and service providers to ensure that important details are taken care of; for example, power and a screen are provided for CART; microphones and the speakers' computer sound output is connected to the ALD/hearing loop system.

Sometimes you might use the Internet for providing alternative formats of materials during the presentation; for example, allowing people using screen readers or other assistive technologies to follow along with an online version of your displayed material. For remote CART, you will need a connection that is reliable and has sufficient bandwidth for transferring audio.

Some people need more time to get from room to room; for example, because the accessible route is longer, or they move slowly. Schedule sufficient breaks. People might need to take care of medical needs during breaks. Keep to the schedule as much as possible, and inform participants ahead of time of any changes.

Give speakers accessibility requirements and guidance.

Tell speakers that you expect their material and presentations to be accessible to people with disabilities. Consider including accessibility requirements in any contracts. Consider pointing speakers to this page (www.w3.org/WAI/training/accessible) for guidance, including the link in any speaker guidelines, e-mails, web pages, etc.

Offer handouts, slides, and other material in accessible formats.

Electronic formats such as HTML (that is, web page format) and RTF are often the most flexible to meet different people's needs. Participants might need material in alternative formats such as large print or braille; however, if they get the material in advance electronically, they might not need it in hard copy at all.

Ensure slides, handouts, and other electronic material for participants is accessible.

Use multiple communication methods for different learning styles.

Make text and important visuals big enough to be read even from the back of the room.

This includes graphics on slides, videos, posters, and other non-electronic material.

Use an easy-to-read font face.

Simple fonts with consistent thickness are often easier to read from a distance (as opposed to fonts where parts of the letters are thin, like Times New Roman). Avoid fancy fonts that are difficult to read.

Use sufficient color contrast.

Color contrast guidelines and evaluation tools for web pages might be helpful to determine sufficient contrast (although the medium is different because those guidelines are specifically for web pages).
Use appropriate background and text colors. Some suggest when presenting in a light room to display dark text on a light background. When presenting in a darkened room to display light text on a dark background, and ensure that the weight of text is sufficient (for example, bold).

Speak clearly.

And avoid speaking too fast, so participants and sign language interpreters can better understand you and keep up.

Use simple language.

Avoid or explain jargon, acronyms, and idioms. For example, expressions such as "raising the bar" can be interpreted literally by some people with cognitive disabilities and can be confusing.

Give people time to process information.

Pause between topics. When you ask if anyone has questions, some people with cognitive disabilities will need extra time to form their thoughts into words.

Be visible.

Also be in good light so participants can see your face when you talk, which helps some people hear and understand better. Especially when you don't have a microphone, be careful not to face away from the audience to read projected material.

Even in a small room, some people might need the audio electronically, including people using ALDs/hearing loops and remote CART writers. Note that if you ask "Can everyone hear me OK?" some people might be uncomfortable saying that they cannot.

Ensure that all relevant sound is audible through the sound system.

For example, if the audience doesn't have a microphone, repeat their questions and comments into your microphone before replying.

Say all of the information that is on each slide. (This does not mean that you have to read the slide exactly as it is, it just means that you cover the visual information in what you say.)

Describe pertinent parts of graphics, videos, and other visuals.

Describe them to the extent needed to understand the presentation. (You usually do not need to describe decorative images.)

Describe other visual information.

For example, if you ask a question of the audience, summarize the response, such as, Speaker: "If you make your websites fully accessible, please raise your hand."...then: "About half raised their hand."

This web page addresses in-person sessions; there are additional considerations for online, remote, and virtual sessions.Details on how to make material that you give to participants accessible is beyond the scope of this document.

Assistive technologies are software or equipment that people with disabilities use to improve interaction with the web, such as screen readers that read aloud web pages for people who cannot read text, screen magnifiers for people with some types of low vision, and voice recognition software and selection switches for people who cannot use a keyboard or mouse.

This includes sign language interpreters, cued speech transliterators, and others. Note that sign languages are different from spoken languages and there is not a one-to-one translation.

Note: This page is in-progress. The content is stable. The expand-collapse functionality is being refined. Comments welcome to wai-eo-editors@w3.org (a publicly archived list) or wai@w3.org (a WAI staff-only list).

Status: Updated 20 February 2012 (first published May 2010) [changelog]
Editor: Shawn Lawton Henry. Contributors: Shadi Abou-Zahra and participants of the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) Education and Outreach Working Group (EOWG), including staff of the WAI-AGE Project (IST 035015) funded by the European Commission under the 6th Framework.